Lowry wrote a poem entitled "These Animals That Follow Us About In Dreams". Animals and birds, for instance the dogs that follow the Consul, inhabit simultaneously the natural and spiritual worlds.
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| ...before you could say Coclogenus paca Mexico – UTV, 188.
An erroneous reference to Coelgenus paca, a tailless rodent not unlike an agouti, once to be seen in a cage at the small zoo in Chapultepec Park, Cuernavaca - the zoo to which Yvonne suggests they go (186). The zoo survived until the 1980s (when this photo was taken there), but is not longer there. The manuscripts originally read: "before you could say Jack Robinson"; but Lowry transferred the phrase Coclogenus paca Mexico from the later discussion of the zoo back to this point, to invoke an apparently mysterious grimoire. |
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| "He's a coppery-tailed trogon I believe … Trogon ambiguus ambiguus is the exact name, I think, the ambiguous bird!" – UTV, 75.
The bird is slightly out of its habitat, being usually confined to south Arizona; but Lowry took the image, and the name, from Roger Peterson's A Field Guide to Western Birds, where this image is given (101), and the details specified (102): about 11.5 inches long, head and upper parts a dark glossy green; and underparts (despite the Consul's "And he has no red breast") bright rose-red; tail square-tipped and moderately long; bill stout and pale; with a slightly parrot-like profile and a cry consisting of a rapid series of low coarse notes. |
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| Urraca | Condor | |
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"But can't you see you cabrón..." – UTV, 74. Sp. "goat"; but as the Consul is only too aware, the word also means "cuckold". Hugh glanced suspiciously at a billy goat which had been following them on their right .... The goat had charged and Hugh felt the sudden intoxicating terrified incidence and wamth of Yvonne's body as the animal missed them, skidded round the abupt leftward bend ... – UTV, 103. The goat is a materialisation of the Consul. The sudden change, the patriarchal contempt, the destructive urge and the Machiavellian eye embody the Consul's malevolent feelings, which too often have had the effect of driving Yvonne closer to Hugh. Lowry may also have intended a reference to Moby Dick, Ch. 99: "stand aside! Here's the battering-ram, Capricornus, or the Goat; full tilt he comes rushing, and headlong we are tossed." Image (above): Rear cover (detail) of Lowry's 'Pegaso' notebook [UBC 12-14]. The notebook is Mexican in origin, though Lowry likely used it in Vancouver between 1939 and 1940 for UTV material. |